'If you have nothing better to do sometime, pour a nice glass of wine and curl up with Arizona State’s Rage Study. The most recent edition is from 2013 and it tells us that almost $76-billion in revenue is at risk thanks to “extremely” and “very upset” US households who called to complain about something. That’s a lot of dough, Lords and Ladies of the Spin Cycle, and that’s just consumers.

'I very much doubt there is a marketer in North America who has not attended a presentation by someone who worked on the first Obama campaign. To be sure, it is a compelling case study and a warm tale of the power of message over whatever that was the McCain campaign was doing. It covers a lot of ground in a very short space and leaves brand marketers with 9 things to ponder. You need your geeks.

'There are a few statistics that are used to torment marketers. We’ve all had some chief something or other office sneer that 50 percent of advertising is wasted. We’ve all had that business of how much more it costs to acquire a customer than to retain one and, since June of 2012, we’ve been dealing with the apparent end of solution selling. Goodness. Just like that? Where do you think it went? .

'Last week we looked at Customer Experience management (CEM) and the three reasons I think we’re doing it wrong. Reason #1 was forgetting that at the beginning, middle and end of all customer experiences is emotion. Reason #2: We focus on the problem. think car dealers have figured this one out. If you were very lucky, someone had put a dying TV in the room tuned permanently to Welsh cartoons.

'One of my favourite business writers, Geoffrey James , once wrote that B2B selling is “not only different from B2C selling, it’s massively more difficult …”. Here’s the whole article. When we look at the marketing side of B2B, I’m not sure it’s any more difficult than B2C, but I suggest it is considerably more complex. In the consumer world, the distance is pretty short.

'We’ve spent the past two weeks feeling sad about the state of customer experience management (CEM), so it’s time to lighten up a little and talk about why marketers should care. Last week we saw the clear relationship between good CEM and good corporate performance. We can chalk up at least a bit of this to the value of the brand itself. This is why I think marketing ought to own CEM.

'If you want to have fun at an otherwise dull wedding or corporate event, try to sit next to a professional event planner. When they aren’t trying to plan their own events, they can be found sitting in the back of other people’s events dishing out the catty remarks that make the back row so much fun. You’ll hear stuff like “Well that’s one way to save a few bucks on pate” and “I’m sure that give-away looked great in the catalogue.”. They can’t help it, and marketing folks can’t help being equally bitchy about bad marketing. Let’s start with this ad. Nasty. The issue here is fear. Related Posts.
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'Patty’s company recently lifted some of its restrictions, and now allows most employees to access the web from their desks. The reason you did not hear the great cheer that arose is because, of course, they had been accessing it with their mobile devices for years and really didn’t notice. The Hand-Wringers, worried about someone uploading all The Big Secrets to the scary internet, had turned their attention instead to encrypting flash drives and banning the use of adjectives, and probably assume that Patty will become the Dolores of Social and keep it all to herself. Yes, them.
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'Oh dear, poor Radio Shack has bought the farm. To be honest, I thought they’d gone to Retail Heaven years ago, but apparently they struggled on far longer than I would have thought likely. Smarter people than me are going to analyze this one to bits, and I don’t doubt there are dozens of reasons for its demise, but I will offer up this as a contributing factor: they forgot to talk to everyone at the party. Brands live (or not) at the intersection of experience and expectation, a location good marketers know well. That’s the promotion bit of things. This festive stuff is the product part.
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'I like to start my Monday mornings with a visit to LinkedIn. It’s a lazy sort of way to shake off the Netflix hangover and ease into the week with a nice view of what my network has been up to. think it’s because a lot of people realize on Sunday afternoon that they have once again failed to win a lottery, and are compelled to suck it up at the office for another week. Updating their LinkedIn profiles, randomly endorsing strangers and finding a bunch of shareable content seems to be the Sunday self-medication of choice for knowledge workers. Content is the fibre of your social media diet.
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'About a thousand years ago, when I took my first job in the corporate world, my boss’s secretary gave me a little tour. We saw the Corporate Overlord floor , we saw the typing pool (yes, those were real). There was a switchboard with crusty operators, a well-medicated tea lady and Dolores. Dolores” , the secretary whispered, “is the Telex Operator. Best steer clear.”. “What’s a Telex?” ” I asked. Apparently it was an early form of Twitter only with more characters and an important sounding noise. Dolores, it turned out, also had the fax machine. And that is always bad.
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